TOP 10 TOOLS 2008
Mark Schumann

I work in a secondary school in Melbourne, Australia, as an e-Learning Developer.  I manage our e-Learning systems (Moodle, etc), and support and train staff in their use.  I’m always looking to share resources with staff, and am constantly pushing new ideas and web 2.0 technologies with them.  I developed www.edutagger.com (K-12 social bookmarking) to help in this regard.

Mark's Top 10 Tools as at 21 February 2008

1. Edutagger (K-12 Social Bookmarking) -  Edutagger follows the Digg concept of social bookmarking, allowing you to share your web links online, all within an educational context.  Given its educational focus, you are likely to find resources very specific to education, as opposed to Digg or del.icio.us.

2. Voicethread - Voicethread brings discussions on such media as video to an entirely new level.  It allows you and your students to collaboratively share your thoughts on video whilst watching simultaneously.

3. Wikipedia - Just about any small piece of information I need can be found on wikipedia.

4. Firefox and its many extensions - Through the use of Firefox’s vast selection of extensions, I have been able to explore the web in so many different ways that I didn’t think were possible.  I’ve also been able to develop for the web much easier

5. Google Reader - I store all my RSS feeds on Google Reader, it basically sits there all day updating content live.

6. Moodle - Moodle is the most comprehensive open source e-Learning system out there.  It can be complicated to use at first, but once you understand its intricacies you can really appreciate its power.

7. Digg - Digg provides me with user-driven social news filtered down to what is most popular.  Without needing to explore the deepest pages on traditional news websites, Digg provides me with what is most interesting

8. Dreamweaver - Dreamweaver provides almost everything I need for web development.

9. Google Apps - I’m using Google Apps more and more with documents I need to refer to on an ongoing basis.  Things like to-do lists, document collaboration and even mortgage spreadsheets are all used.

10. Google Analytics - For web tracking, Google Analytics provides me with a huge amount of important information about web visitors in a visually attractive form.